In the draughty furniture workshop of a small Italian town, Salvatore Mancini is preparing himself for a run on wardrobes. "I imagine more people will begin to ask me for them," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "But when you live in Narnia, what can you expect?"

Neither Signor Mancini, nor the other 20,000 inhabitants of the real-life Narnia, can quite understand the outside world's sudden fascination with their sleepy corner of Umbria, 50 miles north of Rome. Since being conquered by the Romans in 299 BC, they have pretty much been left to their own devices.

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Lewis might also have come across references to Narnia in a series of classical texts, although it is thought that he never actually visited the town. Tacitus and Livy both mention Narnia, while Pliny the Younger sent a letter to his mother-in-law complimenting her on the beautiful baths in her Narnia villa.

Pliny the Elder comments on Narnia's unusual weather in his Natural History - not that it was covered in snow year-round, but that it became drier in the rainy season.

But could the Sunday Telegraph establish any real-life connections between the hilltop town and Lewis's books?

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And what about Aslan, the Christ-like lion king who ensures that spring returns to Narnia?

"Yes, we have many lions," says Anna Laura Bobbi, the cultural affairs representative for Narni. "There is one carved stone lion in our town hall, two more on the cathedral steps and one dating from Roman times." She adds: "We also have a stone table, of the sort on which Aslan was killed. It dates from the Neolithic period."